Coffee
by amberpire
Summary: "I have to wait." ;Andre/Cat; ;Cat/Jade;


**A/N:** _Not sure where this came from, but I was avoiding homework and this came out of it. Enjoy and please review!_

_Also, I do not own Victorious. _

* * *

Jade's lips are on her neck and it feels nice, like the final lick of a tootsie pop. And she doesn't know why she says it because she wasn't thinking about saying anything, it always makes Jade mad, but before she can dam her lips, the words spill out. "Maybe we should tell Beck."

Jade pulls back from her neck and meets the redhead's gaze, her own eyes narrowing into green slits.

"Maybe you should stop talking."

Jade silences her with her tongue and her teeth and Cat decides that all of this tastes better as a secret, anyway.

/-/

"Little Red, what's that from?"

Andre's finger hooks around the collar of Cat's shirt and tugs it down, the green circle peeking out like some grotesque eyeball.

Andre blushes. Says he's sorry, that he didn't mean to pry.

"Who's the lucky guy?"

Cat's eyes flick over Andre's shoulder. Jade is pressed against the lockers, fingers curled around Beck's collar and tugging him closer.

Her smile falters. She looks at Andre again and something in his eyes is off, like he wants to see Cat's hickey again, like he wants to touch her again.

"I'm not supposed to tell," Cat says, and when she walks to class, she tries to make eye contact with Jade.

But she's too busy kissing Beck.

/-/

Well, Cat decides, if Jade can kiss Beck and get away with it, then she'll kiss boys, too.

Andre tastes really sweet. It messes with Cat's brain, because she's used to coffee and peppermint gum. His hands are softer than Jade's. She invited herself over and they were watching movies but then Cat got bored and her body felt lonely, and, well, Andre was right there.

He whispers her name against her lips as his fingers crawl up her shirt. He asks if it's okay to touch her.

Cat's eyes blink curiously open, brown eyes reflecting each others'. No one has asked her that before, so she tells him that.

He smiles and it's sweet and soft. "That's a shame, Little Red."

They kiss for awhile longer and then he drives her home. Cat smiles out the window, humming softly, and when he walks her up to her door he asks if she wants to be his girlfriend.

And right there, right then, she kind of does, so she says yes. He kisses her again.

When she walks into her bedroom, Jade is pushing herself up on her elbows and her eyebrows are arched accusingly.

"Get over here," she says.

Cat swallows.

And then she obeys.

/-/

Andre's her boyfriend now, so that means she holds his hand in the hallways and he sings to her during lunch.

His eyes have honey melted around the pupil and she thinks they're really pretty, so she gets close to his face a lot. He takes advantage of that and kisses her a lot in return.

Jade is glaring at her from the opposite side of the lunch table. The sun makes her eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks that look like spider legs.

Cat meets Jade's eyes over the neck of Andre's guitar and then she kisses him, just to spite her. She swears Jade almost grinds her teeth into dust.

/-/

"Andre?"

He looks up from his homework. Cat's chewing her eraser.

"Yeah, babe?"

Her lips quirk into a smile before she can help it. She likes the way it sounds, 'babe', like she's his pet. She's sure that something about that is condescending to women but she can't find herself caring very much.

"Why do you like me?"

His face goes gentle, his arm reaching across the table to run his fingers along her cheek. "Because you're a sweet girl."

That's more than Jade has ever said about her, so she takes his words with a kiss.

/-/

"Why are you messing with Andre?" Jade says, her teeth clamping on Cat's collarbone.

Cat's breath flutters out of her neck. "Because you're messing with Beck."

"Beck is my boyfriend."

"Andre is mine."

"It's not the same, Cat. You don't love Andre." Jade is plucking the buttons of her pants now and the fire in Cat's stomach is making it hard to concentrate. She wishes Jade would just shut up so they could have fun and be careless like they used to be, before it got all messy.

"I don't think you love Beck, either."

The crack of skin on skin is so loud, Cat thinks for several moments that a firecracker has gone off in her room.

Her cheek is tingling when she stumbles against the wall and Jade is crying and then Cat cries, too.

Jade leaves and Cat is left staring blankly at the walls. She wishes she could forget how to think.

/-/

Andre keeps asking if she's okay.

She keeps lying.

He keeps believing her.

/-/

Cat doesn't even know what it started, or why it started, she just knows that one day Jade said she was bored and Cat looked nice in her nightgown.

It feels like years ago but Cat isn't sure. Jade's fingers had felt like paintbrushes, like she was stroking details into her skin and making her beautiful.

When she wasn't with Jade, she started drinking coffee and buying peppermint gum to make up for the time between. And it was just fun at first, just carelessness, just her and Jade kissing and giggling on Cat's bed with her TV up too loud and there were no boys involved.

But along came a spider and Jade started kissing him, instead.

Cat didn't say anything. She never says anything, because Jade kept coming back, kept kissing her and touching her and making her feel things that were like poetry disguised as sensations, but soon the laughter was gone and it was all biting and bruises and _get over here_.

It's like she doesn't know the meaning of the word 'no'.

/-/

"Andre, please."

He's shaking his head. He's naked and she's naked and she's begging him. She's never had to beg a boy to do anything before.

"I don't know if I'm - if we're - we've only been together a few weeks -"

"Please, Andre. It's okay, please? Pretty please?"

He's clumsy. It hurts.

It doesn't feel the same.

/-/

She's walking out of school, shifting her backpack on her shoulder when fingers curl around her wrist. She thinks it's Andre, but when she turns it's green eyes penetrating her brown.

"Hey."

"Hey."

Jade's teeth abuses her lip for a moment as kids move past them. She doesn't let go of Cat's wrist.

"We should probably stop. I mean, I don't want to fuck up what you have with Andre. He, like, loves you."

Cat's eyebrows meet over her nose and her chest thuds painfully. "Yeah."

She watches Jade's back mold into the crowd.

/-/

"Do you love me?"

Andre's fingers slip on the strings of his guitar, a screech vibrating in the open belly. He looks up, eyes wide. "What?"

She jerks her head back to her homework. "Nevermind."

"Red ..."

They leave it at that. Cat pulls him into her room later and she tries to wash Jade out of her sheets by pushing Andre on his back and straddling him. She almost tells him that she hates the way his mouth tastes like toothpaste and she wishes he would drink coffee or something but she doesn't, just closes her eyes and tangles her fingers in the braids of his hair.

"I'm going to fall in love with you," he says when she's laying on her side with the sheets up to her chin.

_Please don't_, she thinks.

/-/

Headlights are sweeping into her room, followed by her mother's voice floating down the hall. "Cat, Jade's here!"

She looks so beautiful standing in the doorway, like she tumbled straight from the clouds and the forests of her eyes so desperately need the sunlight.

Cat leaps across the carpet and kisses her, fingers twisting the lock of her door.

"I can't do it, Cat, I just _can't _-"

Cat kisses her, tells her to shut up.

/-/

Cat breaks up with Andre on a Tuesday.

He says he doesn't understand, that Cat isn't making sense. She keeps touching the bruises on her collarbone and saying, "I have to wait."

/-/

"You're never going to leave him, are you?"

Jade's fingers halt on the slope of Cat's hip. It's been almost a month.

"It's not that easy, Cat."

"I did it."

"I've been with Beck for years."

"You've been with me a lot longer."

Jade takes her chin and kisses her, _coffeecoffeecoffee_.

"I love you," Cat says, and her eyes sting.

"I know."

/-/


End file.
